I agree in that it makes more sense to place culpability on those with racial privilege, and not on black activists, including black separatists and nationalist.
White organizers didn’t make the class-racism connection.
For example the AFL-CIO half-stepped regarding anti-racism in the 1950s or 1960s, while they also purged socialists from their ranks.
So i’m not blaming black folk for the lack of class-race connection.
Another example lack of white solidarity is Irish immigrants whom were oppressed by the English and discriminated against in the US.
Instead of class-race solidarity, most Irish immigrants embraced US racism in order to assimilate into this society, many of them becoming cops
Jayson White You’re arguing against points I didn’t make regarding MLK logically connecting racism in the US with colonialism and global capitalism.
That is a factual statement, not a matter of me saying what people SHOULD do.
Solidarity is an extension of self-interest. Different individuals of different groups will emphasize that which most pertains to their experience. That prioritization is subjective, not objective according to some sort of cosmic ledger for comparing forms of oppression.
Has the race reductionism and other racial politics of the 1970s thru the early 2000s led to significant dismantling of systemic racism?
I suggest it hasn’t and that race reductionism actually further enables the economic abuses that disproportionately hurt black folk and other people of color.
Obviously and for good reasons many black folk are primarily focused on the problem of racism.
In solidarity with that, white folk should humbly follow their leadership on that issue, as part of a broader movement for economic and political freedom and for the habitability of our planet.
I sincerely don’t think it can work any other way
Jayson White Regarding how solidarity may be more existential and subjective than objective, it seems that part of anti-racism involves white folk, such as myself, realizing we can never fully understand what means to be the object of anti-black racism. Hence it’s impossible for white folk to lead regarding anti-racism. Instead, on that cause, white folk must follow
Jayson White Your point about the Seattle official sidelining BLM reminds me to clarify my point regarding black nationalism.
According to my understanding, which obviously may be incorrect, a big part of black separatism came from black organizers not wanting white middle and upper class liberals, well-intentioned or not, to coopt, sideline or hijack black freedom struggles in the US.
So to be clear, I wasn’t equating black separatist nationalism with the racist conservative backlash that gained ground in the 1970s and continues to the present.
It makes no sense for me to fault black separatists trying to deal with the double-bind, the Devil and the deep blue sea, so to speak, of the reactionary racism of white conservatives on the one-hand, and the perhaps more subtle racism of white liberals who, intentionally or not, often ended up side-lining anti-racism by combining it with some other cause.
My guess is that was a big part of Malcolm X’s criticism of MLK as an Uncle Tom.
However, I do suggest that the cases of South Africa and Zimbabwe indicate the need for multiracial opposition to the predations of global capitalism, not black separatism.
But I’m open to admitting error in light of evidence.
Jayson White BLM organizers early on several years ago chose to include human rights issues pertaining to transgender folk and also to the Palestinian struggle.
Numerous Black thinkers and writers explicitly connect Black freedom struggles with many other forms of oppression, as a matter of ethical consistency and political strategy
Of course, where such soc movement “intersectionality” is lacking, those with racial, class and other forms of privilege should bear most of the culpability
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